The city of Florence can claim to itself a title that no other place in the world would be eligible to claim: it is the birth place of the Renaissance. This single fact is enough to make it one of the most interesting places in the world, especially for artists and historians. George Eliot was both an artist and a historian and many of her novels are great living pictures of history. Romola is no exception. The aim of this paper is to present a reading of ways in which Eliot uses the city of Florence as a motif in her fourth novel, Romola. We argue that, much more than setting or background, Florence works as a symbolic floor plan to the novel and is an essential artistic element used to convey its central themes.

Keywords: George Eliot, Romola, Florence.